Short Fiction

The Brothers GrimmOne day, as he was looking for wild figs in a grove some way from the town, Aladdin met a mysterious stranger. This smartly dressed dark-eyed man with a trim black beard and a splendid sapphire in his turban, asked Aladdin an unusual question: "Come here, boy," he ordered. "How would you like to earn a silver penny?"

Anatole FranceAs I understand criticism it is, like philosophy and history, a kind of novel for the use of discreet and curious minds. And every novel, rightly understood, is an autobiography. The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.

James JoyceHer name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand. My eyes were often full of tears (I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom. I thought little of the future. I did not know whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I could tell her of my confused adoration.

Roald DahlEverything is fine, he thought. I'm doing all right. I'm doing nicely. I know my way home. I'll be there in half an hour. When I land I shall taxi in and switch off my engine and I shall say, help me to get out, will you. I shall make my voice sound ordinary and natural and none of them will take any notice. Then I shall say, someone help me to get out. I can't do it alone because I've lost one of my legs.

Maxim GorkiyThe kings of steel, of petroleum, and all the other kings of the United States have always in a high degree excited my power of imagination. It seemed to me certain that these people who possess so much money could not be like other mortals.

Edgar Allen PoeFor the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not -- and very surely do I not dream. But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburthen my soul.

Fyodor DostoevskyA strange requirement. I did not resent it, I am a timid man; but here they have actually made me out mad. An artist painted my portrait as it happened: "After all, you are a literary man," he said. I submitted, he exhibited it. I read: "Go and look at that morbid face suggesting insanity."

Edgar Allen PoeThe thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitely, settled--but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish but punish with impunity.

Samruam Singh, translated by Katherine A. Bowie.But what was he to have done? No matter what, he would have to let his daughter go with Yai Phloy. So what point would there have been in disagreeing with her, in forcing her to speak the truth? Wouldn't he only be degrading himself by admitting openly for everyone to hear that he was so destitute that he had to sell his daughter.

Oscar WildeOne morning the old Water-rat put his head out of his hole. He had bright beady eyes and stiff grey whiskers, and his tail was like a long bit of black india-rubber. The little ducks were swimming about in the pond, looking just like a lot of yellow canaries, and their mother, who was pure white with real red legs, was trying to teach them how to stand on their heads in the water.

Gabriel Garcia MarquezAll of a sudden she noticed that her beauty had fallen all apart on her, that it had begun to pain her physically like a tumor or a cancer. She still remembered the weight of the privilege she had borne over her body during adolescence, which she had dropped now--who knows where?--with the weariness of resignation, with the final gesture of a declining creature.

Doctress NeutopiaIt was strange when people began congratulating me on
finishing up my dissertation. What were they congratulating me
for? Was it for having enough money to make it through the system
after a decade of struggle with the financial aid bureaucracy?
Were they proud that I had conformed my behavior enough to sit
through hours of boring and meaningless lectures? Or, were they
congratulating me because now I was an official doctress and now I
had the credentials to pursue an upper-middle class professorship
which will enable me to then buy into the American dream?

Gabriel Garcia MarquezThen she looked at me. I thought that she was looking at me for the first time. But then, when she turned around behind the lamp and I kept feeling her slippery and oily look in back of me, over my shoulder, I understood that it was I who was looking at her for the first time.

Telisha Moore"Well, here it is, man," Flapjack said as he thumped the black gun on
the scarred coffee table. It was a .38 snubnose-loaded and well-worn.
Wallace slowly moved the gun off the letter he was writing, folded the
crisp page, and put it in his pocket.

Oscar WildeHigh above the city, on a tall column, stood the statue of the Happy Prince. He was gilded all over with thin leaves of fine gold, for eyes he had two bright sapphires, and a large red ruby glowed on his sword-hilt.

Forrest PritchardIt happened that Chuck had a garden next to his woodpile so he could
throw the chips and mulch without much work. But what he didn't know
was that a groundhog had come by near the end of summer to settle
himself under the woodpile for his winter nap.

Anatole FranceM. Ferdinand Brunetière, of whom I am very fond, has a great quarrel with me. He reproaches me with misunderstanding the very laws of criticism, with having no criterion by which to judge the things of the mind, with floating amid contradictions with no guide but my instincts, with never getting out of myself, with being enclosed within my subjectivity as in a dark prison.

Joe BowersThe boy was grey, too. He wore an olive green trenchcoat (an army cast-off like his boots) over funereal black, greasy hair obscuring his eyes. They must have been grey. He was narrow-shouldered and small, and walked like he was in a trance. I suppose he was. It was trance weather.

This first collection of Father Brown mysteries, widely considered the author’s best, includes "The Blue Cross" "The Hammer of God," "The Eye of Apollo" and more. Father Brown is the opposite of Sherlock Holmes—the quiet, nondescript little priest whom nobody notices.

James JoyceFew fellows had talents like his, and fewer still could remain unspoiled by such success. Gallaher's heart was in the right place and he had deserved to win. It was something to have a friend like that.

Anton ChekhovIvan Dmitritch, a middle-class man who lived with his family on an
income of twelve hundred a year and was very well satisfied with
his lot, sat down on the sofa after supper and began reading the
newspaper.

Brian Brennan Out early one morning--this itself a surprise, normally I sleep past noon, spending the most difficult part of the day in bed--I pass a woman on the sidewalk. "Please help me," she cries, "I have lost my feet.

Richard Connell"Mirage," thought Rainsford. But it was no mirage, he found, when
he opened the tall spiked iron gate. The stone steps were real
enough; the massive door with a leering gargoyle for a knocker was
real enough; yet above it all hung an air of unreality.

Krishna PadmasolaI felt bad today.That headache was back. Dr. Wilkins came and spent
some time with me. He is very nice with all the inmates,but sometimes
I think I can detect some trace of annoyance in him when Martha goes
on and on with her list of complaints and does not want to let him go.

Ambrose BierceA man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking
down into the swift water twenty feet below. The man's hands were
behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely
encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above
his head and the slack fell to the level of his knees.

O. HenryIt looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you. We were down South, in Alabama--Bill Driscoll and myself-when this kidnapping idea struck us. It was, as Bill afterward expressed it, 'during a moment of temporary mental apparition'; but we didn't find that out till later.

O. HenryA guard came to the prison shoe-shop, where Jimmy Valentine was assiduously stitching uppers, and escorted him to the front office. There the warden handed Jimmy his pardon, which had been signed that morning by the governor. Jimmy took it in a tired kind of way.

Anatole FranceWhen we read, then, these excellent books, these books of life, we cause them to pass into ourselves. The critic must be thoroughly penetrated by the knowledge that every book exists in as many different forms as it has readers and that a poem, like a landscape, becomes transformed for every eye that sees it, for every soul that apprehends it.

Lynda ColemanWhen I left the twenty-nine-day residential treatment program two years ago, I was asked to abandon thirteen years of accessible stress management, a particular combination of dime draws, FACs (Friday-afternoon clubs), Reba McIntire, pool tables with chewed-up felt and obscene table roll. But it's times like this I wish I was back on a barstool, because at least I know those rules.

Makya McBeeThe glass slipped out of her hand. For a brief moment she was brought to life. She turned her head and watched the glass fall. How slowly it fell. Inside, her mind was consumed, but outside, she only thought—how slowly it fell. It seemed she could catch it if she only reached out, but somehow she could only watch it fall.

Oscar Wilde'The Earth is going to be married, and this is her bridal dress,'
whispered the Turtle-doves to each other. Their little pink feet
were quite frost-bitten, but they felt that it was their duty to
take a romantic view of the situation.

Patrick WaddingtonMarc Girondin had worked in the filing section of the city hall's engineering department for so long that the city was laid out in his mind like a map, full of names and places, intersecting streets and streets that led nowhere, blind alleys and winding lanes.

Guy de MaupassantPaolo Saverini's widow lived alone with her son in a poor little
house on the ramparts of Bonifacio. The town, built on a spur of
the mountains, in places actually overhanging the sea, looks across
a channel bristling with reefs, to the lower shores of Sardinia.

Brian BrennanWalter wakes up curled around a shopping cart. Everything is in it: a panel of the "Yellow Kid" comic strip wrapped in plastic; a pane of glass from the Crystal Palace; campaign pins from Eisenhower's second run; cans of paint; everything else. Trade one of the campaign pins for a cup of coffee then get down to business: the line of white paint that started--when the paint was fresh--in Germantown or Center City, he doesn't remember which.